Deconstruction and Derrida

Derrida and 

Deconstruction

Question and Answer Format

1.1  Why is it difficult to define Deconstruction?

To begin the explanation of the definition of Derrida, it can be said that Derrida himself refused to define the term ‘deconstruction’. He asks a question first that is it even possible to define the word deconstruction. Or if it is possible then to what extent can it be defined. As the major assumption of twentieth-century criticism, it is somewhat a difficult task to define it because we seem to be habituated with clear definitions of all theories.

To me it seems that deconstruction is not simply a branch of literary criticism but it is a close study of any text or any work of art. It is a new way of inquiring a text which cannot be called ‘deconstruction’ in a literal sense but can be called the same from a wider perspective. Perhaps, this can be one of the several reasons that why ‘Deconstruction’ is difficult to define.

1.2 Is Deconstruction a negative term?

Deconstruction is not at all a negative term. It does not suggest the destruction/ breaking of something but it is in itself skeptical in nature and it makes an inquiry into the foundations. It deals with a philosophical system. It can be said as a subversive way of looking at texts or any work of art. Derrida believes that there is nothing outside the text that can provide ample resources as the inside of the text can provide.

As far as its the assumption as a negative term is concerned, it may be because, in French, Deconstruction implied an annihilation or negative reduction much closer to Nietzchean 'Demolition’. But Derrida wanted to transform the way people think and it is more of a philosophical outlook so that is why it is not a negative term.

o1.3 How does Deconstruction happen on its own?

Deconstruction can be described as more of a way of reading and inquiring a text than the theory of criticism that is to be applied. So, it can be said that while reading a text, the process of discovering meanings starts on its own. Besides, the binary oppositions of words make it a self-generated activity.

2.1- The influence of Heidegger on Derrida

Derrida’s ideas were primarily influenced by three philosophers

1. Friedrich Nietzsche
2. Martin Heidegger
3. Sigmund Freud

Among the three, the seeds of deconstruction sprouted from Martin Heidegger. In his work “Being and Time”, Heidegger says that he wants to modify the thinking pattern of Westerners because the Western tradition of philosophy has never concerned about the ‘being of beings’. So by this influence of Heidegger, Derrida gives a proposition where man is decentered from the language and it can be said that ‘Language displaces man from the center of philosophy’. This reinvention of the language of philosophy connects Heidegger and Derrida as both have a common connection of the “Metaphysics of Presence”. 

2.2 Derridian rethinking of the foundations of Western philosophy

In Derrida’s critique of Heidegger’s theory, he mentions that Heidegger also tried to look at language as speech and not as a whole tendency. So, he finds the play of ‘logocentrism’ which he calls ‘phonocentrism’. Derrida believes that if a speaker speaks whatever he intends than the intention is a logocentric theory of western philosophy of language. According to the philosophy of language, there is a metaphysics of presence, a presence of a transcendental signifier that holds its position in meaning. This way logocentrism is responsible for phonocentrism which is known as the Derridian rethinking of the foundations of Western philosophy.

3.1 Ferdinand de Saussurean concept of language (that meaning is arbitrary, relational, constitutive)

Ferdinand de Saussure’s concept of language is rigorously weaved in his major work ‘Course in General Linguistics’ gives a summary of his lectures at the University of Geneva. He describes the relationship between the word and its meaning and says that it’s not natural but it has a conventional meaning. To Saussure, language is a play of differences and there is no positive term in language.

A ‘cat’ is a cat because it is not a rat or is different from rat and hat and not because it is a cat. This leads to various meanings and there is no limit to the number of differences. The explanation provided by the video says-

“What connects a word with its meaning or signal is the convention and the convention is always social.”

Like any word can be used to talk about anything in a technical manner but it’s the convention which connects a word with its meaning. Any signifier is different from the number of signifiers. So a signifier contains a multiple meaning.

3.2 How Derrida deconstructs the idea of arbitrariness?

Derrida develops the concept of Saussure. Derrida suggests that there is difference of meaning. To Saussure, ‘cat’ is different from other thousand different things in language. But to Derrida,

This is one idea of differences.

3.3. • Concept of metaphysics of presence

The video explains that Metaphysics is the term that is taken from Heidegger and that is a connecting link between Heidegger and Derrida. In his work, “Structure, Sign and Play”, Derrida says metaphysics cannot escape from the centred structure. By vacating the language of meaning, we occupy another set of meaning and this is how the theory of metaphysics of presence works which opens up free play of interpretations.

4.1. • Derridian concept of diffArence

According to Derrida, differAnce is made of ‘differing’ and ‘deferring’.

1. Differing refers to what one is not being the other
2. Deferring is something delayed or postponed.

4.2. • Infinite play of meaning

Derrida's theory emphasizes more on free play of meaning resulting into free play of interpretations. As we all know that,

Meaning is always postponed 

Hardly can we find the ultimate meaning of any narrative or speech. For this reason, there arise numerous possibilities to understand the outcome of the conveyed message. This is like,

"I think I understand the Deconstruction theory, but I really don't!"

in the same manner, we think that we have reached to the ultimate meaning but the moment we think so, it is postponed. Therefore, Derrida believes that the ultimate and final meaning is a myth and it would be impossible to reach the final meaning or the ultimate interpretation.  

4.3. • DIfferAnce = to differ + to defer

From one point of view, it can be said that Differing is Spatial and Deferring is temporal. Here is the clarification of Derrida's 'differAnce'.

5.1. • Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences

Derrida’s ‘Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences’ is an essay that begins with a line of French essayist-thinker Montaigne which sets the tone. The essay sets at the outset to analyze the concept of structure.

 Derrida’s the fascinating statement which sums up what deconstruction is all about in just one line-

“Language bears within itself the necessity of its own critique”

It is a reaction of structuralism and Derrida discusses this with a questioning spirit where he talks about Claude Levi Strauss and his assumption as well deconstructs it and suggests a new hypothesis.

5.2. • Explain: "Language bears within itself the necessity of its own critique."

This statement leads us critiquing two directions-

a.   The limits of the oppositions make us “question systematically and rigorously the history of these concepts”

b.     Conserves the old concepts and their residues and whenever necessary denouncing and critiquing them.

Hence, in this way, Claude Levi-Strauss separates truth and method.  

6.1. • The Yale School: the hub of the practitioners of Deconstruction in the literary theories

The Yale School had a set of literary critics who absorbed Derridian influence and brought a new turn to American criticism. 

6.2. • The characteristics of the Yale School of Deconstruction

The main aim of Yale Critics was to take Derridian's idea to play of difference and apply it to the literary text. Some of the characteristics of Yale School are-

• 1.      Literature is the primary rhetorical and figurative in structure. To Yale School, “every reading is misreading” because of language which creates ambivalence.

• 2.    The second characteristic of Yale University is that Language does not take us directly to society or outside of language and hence, a language is not a transparent medium of communication and what makes it blur or non-transparent is the figurative component. 

• 3.    The third characteristic is that the deconstructionists read the important romantic text as creating a different kind of meaning. This way preoccupation with romanticism is different.

7.1. • How other schools like New Historicism, Cultural Materialism, Feminism, Marxism and Postcolonial theorists used Deconstruction?

Derrida is said to have himself refused to give the definition of deconstruction but as the concept is used by other critical theorists in their theories,

"Deconstruction is to take an idea and institution or a set of values and to understand its mechanism by removing the cement that constitutes it"

Another definition which says

"deconstructionism aims of liberating language from the traditional western concept of the text along with the ways of dealing with it."

This way other schools like New Historicism, Cultural Materialism, Feminism, Marxism and Postcolonial theorists used Deconstruction with figurative and rhetorical text to demonstrate that has a multiple ranges of meaning. 

Thank you.

Reference-

Deconstruction and Derrida